Binged On Cake, And Purged The Cupboard

Princess Di was a perfect house guest during her fling with James Hewitt, his mom says.

Shirley Hewitt told Britain’s Hello! that Diana didn’t mind doing dishes and loved chocolate cake, but she was very unhappy.

Diana had a five-year affair with Hewitt, a former army major, while he taught riding to her two sons. He regularly brought the princess home and after the first few visits his mother realized they were lovers.

“As she came more often it became easier,” Mrs. Hewitt says. “She and James would go riding. She was very helpful. She would always help carry the things out after lunch.”

Diana even once tackled a cupboard packed with old bottles and saucers. “She said, ‘What’s all this? It’s disgusting,’ and cleared the whole lot out and gave the cupboard a good wash!”

Loose talk

Tyra Banks, on her looks: “I’m not ‘street fine.’ Street-fine girls are so drop-dead gorgeous, they make you gasp. I’m more ‘model-fine.”’

We have two words for you: plastic surgery

Dustin Hoffman turns 59 today.

She can’t believe how he left her hanging

Princess Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to drunken driving charges related to an April arrest. Kydd blames the media for not only her daughter’s divorce, but son Earl Spencer’s marital woes and her own split from her second husband, wallpaper tycoon Peter Shand Kydd, who walked out on her.

Looks like it’s back to the drawing board

Supermodel Christie Brinkley, whose three previous husbands include singer Billy Joel and developer Richard Taubman, is trying it again with architect Peter Cook. Brinkley said yes when Cook popped the question over the weekend, her assistant said.

She just can’t wait to be wed and well-fed

Actress Alicia Silverstone, in Vanity Fair magazine: “I really love what I’m doing on this movie (“Excess Baggage”), but, at the same time, I’d rather be married and have beautiful babies and millions of animals and eat delicious food and get as fat as I want. Live! You know?”

And she can’t wait to be wide and a bride

Actress Sarah Jessica Parker, on the prospect of marriage to Matthew Broderick, in Redbook magazine: “I look forward to being fat and being at home and eating a lot and having spit-up all over me and being tired and cranky and having some small child desperately need me. When the time is right, I hope it will be all that, and more.”

Daily News? Knife? What a bunch of kidders

Finally, the Associated Press issued the following correction to an item printed here July 31: Margot Kidder was never interviewed by the New York Daily News, and was not holding a knife when she was found dazed and disheveled in a stranger’s back yard in Los Angeles last April.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino